The Most of Us
by Shy Pistachio
Summary: A series of licentious Zutara drabbles, with a few others thrown in. LATEST: "The Perils of Eavesdropping" is its own story!
1. Tides

"Love doesn't wait for the empty."

He turns, a swish of fabric and a twitch of hand. "You can't know that."

Iroh nods, a slight bend of his ageing neck. "Perhaps. But, my dear Prince Zuko, what can you possibly gain by waiting?"

Zuko faces the sea again, toes digging deeper into the sand, and squints into his sun, who snakes water through her hands and rises to meet the tide. She laughs, relishing the feel of the earth's tears. He droops quietly, and it might have been missed but for keen golden eyes that have seen more than enough.

"An opportunity," he replies.


	2. Sifu

This is probably just going to end up being a series of drabbles, most of them 100 words. I'll see if I can attempt to write an actual story at some point, but I have the attention span of a chipmunk whose nuts were laced with LSD. Please enjoy. 100 words.

Sifu

The rocks are unforgiving here.

She didn't remember exactly how she had how she had arrived at this moment, lightning ripping her spine asunder, flames dancing from her fingertips, hot and cold and wet and dry. One minute, fire daggers and water whips, the next, nothing but steam, steam, more steam.

The rock is digging into her back, and this moment of discomfort is enough to bring her back to herself.

"Wait."

He pulls away, and they breathe each other.

A pause.

"I...I don't know how." Her pride crumples at his feet.

A smirk, a stroke. "I'll teach you."


	3. Fetish

This is supposed to be 100 words. It is 124 words.

I'm not even sorry.

Fetish

She didn't really plan for this to happen, it just…_happened._

Her wrists protest, but she does not. She wonders briefly how it came to this, her tied up _again_, this time not to a statue or a tree or with a chain or rough rope but to a quite sturdy bedpost with crimson silk sashes.

"I'm not sure if this is your fetish or mine." She's attempting sardonic, but it really comes out not a little bit breathless. His mouth on the inside of her knee makes framing sentences difficult.

"Definitely yours," he growls quietly, and she can feel it racing up her legs to settle deep in her belly, and he stifles her combination of gasp and sigh with a searing kiss.


	4. Hope

160 words. I think I'm getting steadily worse at this.

Please review.

Hope

They have his eyes, grey like the sea or pebbles or maybe thunderstorms. Her nose peeks out of rounded, upturned faces, and her children who swing on her arms and climb into her lap demand stories of the war, of what used to be.

So she tells them about their father as he faced down the Fire Lord.

She rarely mentions the Fire Lord that took Ozai's place. The one time Kya is brave enough to ask, Katara only says, "He is a good man. You can tell by his eyes." And that is all that is said, because even the wind children can see the hunching of her shoulders.

And as she lies next to her husband at night, his lithe form pressed against hers, she reflects on all of her speeches about hope during the war.

Now, she wonders if she is with him because she herself is hopeless or because hope is all she has left.


	5. Beg

I don't know. I just…I don't know. 144 words.

Beg

She's had a man on his knees before, but not quite like this.

He's prostrate before her, his forehead touching the cobblestones of the Western Air Temple, his hair dangling forward and hiding his face, his scar, his palms flat on the ground, his hands creating a triangle.

"I'll do whatever you want," he says, quietly so as not to wake the others, and she studies the dappled moonlight as it dances across his toned arms. "Please."

Begging doesn't really suit him, she thinks, uncrossing her arms and crouching before him. She places a brown hand on his red shoulder, and his golden eyes meet her blue ones.

She sighs, and her breath plays across his cheeks. A lift of a head and a lick of the lips, and she suddenly can't keep her eyes off his mouth.

"Let's go to bed," she says.


	6. Nature

223 words. (I stopped trying to make them so small. It's really hard telling a story in 100 words or under. Maybe I'll change it 300?)

Nature

It is a simple law of human relationships that mutual need accidentally breeds love. So it was no surprise that, after the Avatar told his lady love that he must return to the Air Temples and uphold the moral of celibacy his people dictated over one hundred years ago and after the would-be Fire Lady informed the Fire Lord that she was leaving because he cared more about his country than he did her, the ambassador of the Southern Water Tribe and the ruler of the Fire Nation would seek comfort through proximity. Friends, after all, provide solace to broken hearts through various mediums: intense rounds of physical exertion (the Fire Lord's bending had been getting rusty, a result from sitting behind a wooden desk for days on end), lengthy walks through the streets of the capital, and the pouring out of souls over emptied bottles of fire whiskey and ice wine.

Most friends, however, do not back up other friends against corridor walls, and kiss them until their lips are swollen. Most friends do not curl around each other in the same bed, murmuring promises of love and fulfillment and understanding. Most friends do not ask other friends to be theirs, forever and always, till death parts them.

The surprise was that a relationship born of mutual need could inspire such happiness.

**A/N: **I wasn't terribly happy with the ending. I considered making it from Iroh's POV, which would have made it easier because he would've said something about tea at the end, but I thought it would be weird to have him discussing how his nephew made out with a girl (among other things). So I just left it with an ambiguous narrator.

Also, if folks want to give suggestions for future drabbles (like different subjects or prompts), I would be more than willing to give them a try. Just mention it when you review. Wink wink, nudge nudge.


	7. Need

189 words.

Need

"Sometimes," she said, and the last time his heart had quailed like this was when he looked in the mirror one day to find half his face gone. "Only sometimes."

And then she was leaning forward and he closed his eyes. It occurred to him that he must remain entirely still and accept whatever happened next.

He felt cool, sure fingers tuck a strand of hair back into his crown, migrate to the sides of his face, to his neck, shoulders, nothing. He opened his eyes to find her smiling up at him the way his mother did the night she left.

"But you know me, Zuko," she was saying, and his eyes flickered to her new necklace that she clutched with whitened, chapped knuckles. She spoke carefully, like a small child reciting poetry. "The things I want aren't always the things I need."

And as she turned away, her braid swinging gently over her shoulder, he caught the scent of storms, heavy and cloying and warm and he thought she smelled like everything he hadn't known he wanted until it turned the corner and disappeared.

ooo

_**A/N:**__ If anyone has any suggestions for prompts for this series, or has a request, I would be more than happy to give it a shot. Just leave it in your review. Thanks for reading!_


	8. Seafaring

359 words.

Seafaring

"I didn't think you ate _that _much food today," Sokka said, his fingers working the rope into a complex knot at the base of the mast. "And we ate meat, which is always good, so _that_ can't be it..."

Zuko remained draped across the edge of the violently jostling boat, and asking any spirit who would listen to just kill him already, thank you, and get it over with.

"…and, I mean, it's not like you haven't spent any time at sea," Sokka was saying, waving a dismissive hand in Zuko's general direction, "so seasickness is out of the question."

Zuko thought his glare might be more effective if he was standing upright, but his legs didn't seem to be working. "I had a _ship_," he tried to snarl, but it came out as more of a miserable moan. "I didn't spend much time on _puny _little saucepans made of _skin_."

"Hey!" Sokka said, clearly affronted, giving the rope one last jerk. He turned and pointed. "It's called _hide_, and this is a _boat_. This is how _men_ sail." His brows unknitted themselves and he shifted his weight to his back leg, folding his arms and looking smug. "You just obviously haven't gotten your sea legs yet, _Fire Lord_."

"Your sister is of a different opinion," Zuko said.

He watched Sokka's arms go limp and dangle, and observed with some interest as his face turned an odd shade of purple. "Y-you—" he sputtered, but Zuko had decided at that moment that Sokka had spent entirely too much of this "bro trip" talking.

"I mean, she says I have pretty good balance and I'm pretty flexible," he continued, tapping his chin and trying to look thoughtful through his wave-induced nausea. "Although, to be fair, I'm nowhere _near_ as flexible as her," –here, Sokka made a strangled gargling sound—"but she said that the thing that I'm _really _talented at is making the _rhythm _just—"

And even though it made his stomach lurch all over again, the sound of Sokka's heaving over the other side of the seacraft made Zuko think that maybe this trip was actually worth it.

ooo

_**A/N: **__I feel like that ending could have been worded better, but I couldn't think of a way to change it. So this is what you get. I thought we were due for a bit of humor after those last few dramatic drabbles._

_I was originally going to make this a Makorra story, but I decided I wanted some bro time between Zuko and Sokka instead. I just wanted to write someone who's seasick. I thought either Zuko or Mako would be the most entertaining, because of their normally overly-serious demeanors. _

_In short, this was fun._


	9. Golden

_**A/N: **__Shout out to LookMeInMyEyes, who gave me the first prompt for this drabble. Here's some Tokka for you (which I also think is kind of a sweet pairing)._

406 words.

Golden

ooo

She had become, he reflected, somewhat beautiful. When he first met her, her hair was shaggy, swept up carelessly into a practical bun that he would lightly tug on when he got annoyed with her (her reciprocation left dents on his backside, he swore). Now, it hung glossily from an elegant ponytail, ending at the small of her back.

The dress looked uncomfortable (if her scowl and sleeve-tugging were any indication), but Sokka had to admit, even _he_ wouldn't have been able to come up with such a piece of architecture. It was layered silk, tapered at the waist, the long sleeves dripping past her hands, attached to the edges of her shoulders by some unknown law of physics. The neckline scooped elegantly, revealing slender collarbones he had never before considered.

_She looks…graceful._

Then she began stomping toward him, obviously miffed. _Then again…_

"I'm going to kill her," she snarled, adjusting the lily in her hair. "I'm going to murder her in her sleep."

"You know Katara," Sokka heard himself saying, unable, for some reason, to tear his eyes from her. "Control freak and whatnot."

Toph snorted, looking up and pointing slightly to his left. "Just you wait," she pronounced, "Zuko's going to go screaming for the hills in the middle of the ceremony."

"Uh-huh." The gold of the dress, he noticed (how was he noticing things now?), brought out the flecks of gold in her pale green eyes.

He found himself speaking again. "You, uh…you look, um, good, Toph." Could she feel his heartbeat? The idea was terrifying, and his heart sped that much faster.

There was a moment of deafening silence as Toph shifted her bare feet slightly, a look of concentration contorting her face. "Shit," she muttered, rolling her eyes. "Katara's going all weepy again." She reached out and punched him in the arm. "See you at the altar, Snoozles." She turned away.

_She didn't hear me. _His exhale of relief morphed into a forceful loss of air as he noticed the entirely exposed back of the dress, which came to a neat point at the small of her back. He could see the two dimples just above her…

"Sokka," said a gravelly voice behind him. He shrieked, spinning around, his hands coming up into claws.

Zuko looked unamused. "What were you staring at?"

Sokka cleared his throat, adjusted his tie. "Nothing," he said, remembering the way her hair tickled her tailbone. "Just…nothing."

ooo

_**A/N 2:**__ Kind of bittersweet ending. I'm not really good at writing happy stuff, normally; it's just not as easy to come up with things that aren't cliché. Hope you enjoyed it anyway._


	10. Perils

Hello, all! I've moved the parts of this drabble series titled "The Perils of Eavesdropping" to its own separate story. It just became too large to put into "The Most of Us," so it has its own home now. Just go to my profile, scroll down to stories, and find it. It should be right there.

It has four chapters at the moment, but there will be five. I'm working on the fifth now, in fact! It should be done very soon, with not nearly the amount of wait time you guys have had for the rest of it. I'm posting two new chapters to "Perils"! Does that make up for the horrible lapse in updates? No? I guess I'll just keep updating, then.

Thanks for reading, and for your patience!


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